At 04:32 PM 4/11/2003 EDT, GaryPig@aol.com wrote: > ><< I also think that SATANIC MAJESTIES is a better record than SGT. PEPPER, >but I've made that argument before. >> > >....and I must have missed it, >Stewart! > >Could you kindly repeat your thoughts, >if only for my benefit of someone who firmly believes FLOWERS is a better >butcher(ed) album than YESTERDAY AND TODAY? With apologies to the Amplifier subscribers who have already seen this: Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, every golden child has his whipping boy. Every Gallant has his Goofus, every Bugs Bunny his Elmer Fudd. And Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has Their Satanic Majesties Request. We've all heard it a million times before. Sgt. Pepper is the greatest album of all time and Satanic Majesties is a load of crap. Given that these albums came out 35 years ago, many of us have been hearing this party line quite literally all our lives. It's presented almost as historical fact that Sgt. Pepper is a masterpiece. Even the New York freakin' Times declared it one of the greatest artworks in the history of western civilization. Well, what can you say after you've said "Oh, for God's sake"? Even without taking the argument that rock and roll's inherent purpose is to, as we used to say in college, subvert the dominant paradigm - an argument that has always been more than a little silly and one that makes even less sense in a world where Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" (remember, the song about how George W. Bush didn't have to go to Vietnam 'cause his daddy could pull some strings?) is used to sell Wranglers - it's easy to say that "With A Little Help From My Friends" is pretty thin gruel when compared to, say, Moby-Dick or Guernica. Besides, the greatest pop album of all time is Game Theory's Lolita Nation. Why? Because I said so. Wait, isn't that an entirely subjective statement? Well, duh. There's no such thing as an objective standard for art, there's only a bunch of opinions, some of them proclaimed more loudly than others. And in my opinion, Sgt. Pepper is not only not the greatest album of all time, it's probably the Beatles' worst album. (Its only competition is Let It Be, which at least has that perversely fascinating train wreck quality in its favor.) This is not to say that there aren't great songs on here: "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life" are brilliant, of course, and I've always liked George's Indian songs, so I dig "Within You, Without You" even though I think it's weaker than either "Love You To" or "The Inner Light." But seriously, have a look at the rest of the track listing. "She's Leaving Home," the most wretchedly sentimental song in Paul McCartney's oeuvre - and I love the guy, but come on, that's a hotly contested honor - alone is enough to dock the album a full letter grade, but "Fixing A Hole," "Good Morning Good Morning" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" are hardly better. Ray Davies and others managed to borrow heavily from the English music hall tradition without coming up with anything as coyly twee as "When I'm 64." Like a restaurant that ladles on the velvety cream sauces, fresh mango-chipotle salsas and artistic drizzles of balsamic vinegar and pesto to try to disguise the fact that the meat underneath all that has been frozen solid for nine months, George Martin and the group prop up a batch of underwritten, half-finished songs with trippy sound effects and inventive arrangements. (For all the trees felled to feed the constant what-ifs about what might have happened if Brian Wilson had finished Smile, how come no one ever wonders what would have happened if EMI hadn't insisted that "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" - two songs that are more daring and richly melodic than anything here - be rush-released as an early 1967 single, scuttling the Beatles' original plan to make an album about their childhoods?) So basically, to sum up: don't believe the hype. And don't believe the anti-hype, either. I am not going to proclaim that Their Satanic Majesties' Request is the Rolling Stones' best album. That would be Between the Buttons. But I would argue that not only is the album not a failed attempt to jump on the psychedelia bandwagon, it's not really that far off from the string of albums and singles that had preceded it. ABKCO's recent reissue of the original '60s Stones albums in crisply remastered sound reveals that from at least the time of December's Children, the Rolling Stones were no strangers to studio experimentation, oddball arrangement and production choices and even that hoary old music hall tradition. The idea that the Rolling Stones were purist rock and roll bad-asses who spent all their time peeing against garage walls and sucking Mars Bars out of Marianne Faithfull is a revisionist invention by a cadre of myopic American rock journalists cheerfully unaware of the implications of the British art school tradition in rock and roll, which the Rolling Stones grew out of as surely as the Beatles or the Who. (These people are also known as the '70s-era writing staff at Rolling Stone magazine.) Like those groups, or the Kinks, or newer bands like the Creation and the Small Faces, the Rolling Stones were fully aware of the incipient art pop scene in Swinging London (retroactively dubbed "freakbeat"), and they dove right in with both feet on classic singles like "Mother's Little Helper," "Ruby Tuesday" and the utterly brilliant "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow," as well as even more arch and witty album tracks like "Cool, Calm and Collected" or "Something Happened To Me Yesterday." Add in the group's increasing interest in psychedelics and Brian Jones' immersion in what would decades later be called "world music" (It's surely the first white rock and roll album to feature African drummers, and "Gomper" is inspired by the same Moroccan musicians Jones would record and release as Brian Jones Presents the Master Musicians of Jajouka before his untimely death), and it becomes clear that if anything, Their Satanic Majesties Request is a more daring and experimental album than Sgt. Pepper. The piss-poor mix (improved considerably on the new remaster, incidentally) obscures much of what's most interesting about these songs, but even a cursory listen reveals at least half a dozen terrific songs - by my count, at least three or four more than Sgt. Pepper has - with three that are among the group's best ever: the majestic, stuttering riff-rocker "Citadel," the horrifically gloomy "2000 Light Years From Home" and the simply lovely "She's A Rainbow." In addition, "In Another Land" is the one halfway-decent song Bill Wyman has ever written, and there are plenty of flashes of the group's under-appreciated sense of humor; the closing track "On With The Show" is one of the funniest things they ever did. Yes, there are filler tracks, but "2000 Man" and the needlessly elongated African-folk-free jazz jam "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)" are no more useless than the similarly half-assed time-wasters that pad out pretty much every other album the band ever made. (Seriously, when was the last time you actually sat down and listened to "Goin' Home"?) And an interesting experiment that doesn't come entirely off is always more interesting than a cynical cash-in for an impending tour, making Their Satanic Majesties Request a far better album than anything the Stones have done since Goats Head Soup. Which came out in 1973. 29 years is way too long to be coasting on reputation. But don't take my word for it. Sit down with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Their Satanic Majesties Request, listen for yourself, and make up your own mind. There are worse ways to spend an evening.